i thank her so much for working so well and hard on this. ms. stabenow: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from michigan. ms. stabenow: thank you very much. i first want to thank senator merkley who has been tireless in bringing forward the issues of the farmers and ranchers in oregon and to my colleagues who are here on the floor from new york and new jersey. i had the opportunity to be in new jersey with senator menendez and to see firsthand also with senator landrieu and senator tester, and it's very, very clear that this is a horrific situation and deserves our attention and support. what we are doing with this amendment, as modified -- i want to thank senator blunt for working with us in cosponsoring the amendment stk-rbs to basically -- is to basically take what we have done and passed in the farm bill and putting it into this very, very important disaster assistance bill. in the spring we experienced late freezes that wiped out many fruit crops in a number of states, including michigan, new york and pennsylvania. in my home state we had a 98% loss